Kimono Part 3

So they became numbered among that shoal of English people out of England, who move restless leisure between Paris and the Nile.

Geoffrey had resigned his commission in the army. His friends thought that this was a mistake. For the loss of a man's career, even when it is uncongenial to him, is a serious amputation, and entails a lesion of spiritual blood. He had refused his father's suggestion of settling down in a house on the Brandan estate, for Lord Brandan was an unpleasing old gentleman, a frequenter of country bars and country barmaids. His son wished to keep his young bride as far away as possible from a spectacle of which he was heartily ashamed.

First of all they went to Paris, which Asako adored; for was it not her home? But this time she made the acquaintance of a Paris unknown to her, save by rumour, in the convent days or within the discreet precincts of Monsieur Murata's villa. She was enchanted by the theatres, the shops, the restaurants, the music, and the life which danced around her. She wanted to rent an _appartement_, and to live there for the rest of her existence.

"But the season is almost over," said her husband; "everybody will be leaving."

Unaccustomed as yet to his freedom, he still felt constrained to do the same as Everybody.

Before leaving Paris, they paid a visit to the Auteuil villa, which had been Asako's home for so many years.

Murata was the manager of a big j.a.panese firm in Paris. He had spent almost all his life abroad and the last twenty years of it in the French capital, so that even in appearance, except for his short stature and his tilted eyes, he had come to look like a Frenchman with his beard _a l'imperiale_, and his quick bird-like gestures. His wife was a j.a.panese, but she too had lost almost all traces of her native mannerisms.

Asako Fujinami had been brought to Paris by her father, who had died there while still a young man. He had entrusted his only child to the care of the Muratas with instructions that she should be educated in European ways and ideas, that she should hold no communication with her relatives in j.a.pan, and that eventually a white husband should be provided for her. He had left his whole fortune in trust for her, and the interest was forwarded regularly to M. Murata by a Tokyo lawyer, to be used for her benefit as her guardian might deem best. This money was to be the only tie between Asako and her native land.

To cut off a child from its family, of which by virtue of vested interests it must still be an important member, was a proceeding so revolutionary to all respectable j.a.panese ideas that even the enlightened Murata demurred. In j.a.pan the individual counts for so little, the family for so much. But Fujinami had insisted, and disobedience to a man's dying wish brings the curse of a "rough ghost"

upon the recalcitrant, and all kinds of evil consequences.

So the Muratas took Asako and cherished her as much as their hearts, withered by exile and by unnatural living, were capable of cheris.h.i.+ng anything. She became a daughter of the well-to-do French _bourgeoisie_, strictly but affectionately disciplined with the proper restraints on the natural growth of her brain and individuality.

Geoffrey Barrington was not very favourably impressed by the Murata household. He wondered how so bright a little flower as Asako could have been reared in such gloomy surroundings. The spirits dominant in the villa were respectable economy and slavish imitation of the tastes and habits of Parisian friends. The living-rooms were as impersonal as the rooms of a boarding-house. Neutral tints abounded, ugly browns and nightmare vegetable patterns on carpets, furniture and wallpapers.

There was a marked tendency towards covers, covers for the chairs and sofas, tablecloths and covers for the tablecloths, covers for cus.h.i.+on-covers, antimaca.s.sars, lamp-stands, vase-stands and every kind of decorative duster. Everywhere the thick smell of concealed grime told of insufficient servants and ineffective sweeping. There was not one ornament or picture which recalled j.a.pan, or gave a clue to the personal tastes of the owners.

Geoffrey had expected to be the nervous witness of an affecting scene between his wife and her adopted parents. But no, the greetings were polite and formal. Asako's frock and jewellery were admired, but without that note of angry envy which often brightens the dullest talk between ladies in England. Then, they sat down to an atrocious lunch eaten in complete silence.

When the meal was over, Murata drew Geoffrey aside into his s.h.i.+ngly garden.

"I think that you will be content with our Asa San," he said; "the character is still plastic. In England it is different; but in France and in j.a.pan we say it is the husband who must make the character of his wife. She is the plain white paper; let him take his brush and write on it what he will. Asa San is a very sweet girl. She is very easy to manage. She has a beautiful disposition. She does not tell lies without reason. She does not wish to make strange friends. I do not think you will have trouble with her."

"He talks about her rather as if she were a horse," thought Geoffrey.

Murata went on,--

"The j.a.panese woman is the ivy which clings to the tree. She does not wish to disobey."

"You think Asako is still very j.a.panese, then?" asked Geoffrey.

"Not her manners, or her looks, or even her thoughts," replied Murata, "but nothing can change the heart."

"Then do you think she is homesick sometimes for j.a.pan?" said her husband.

"Oh no," smiled Murata. The little wizened man was full of smiles.

"She left j.a.pan when she was not two years old. She remembers nothing at all."

"I think one day we shall go to j.a.pan," said Geoffrey, "when we get tired of Europe, you know. It is a wonderful country, I am told; and it does not seem right that Asako should know nothing about it.

Besides, I should like to look into her affairs and find out about her investments."

Murata was staring at his yellow boots with an embarra.s.sed air. It suddenly struck the Englishman that he, Geoffrey Harrington, was related to people who looked like that, and who now had the right to call him cousin. He s.h.i.+vered.

"You can trust her lawyers," said the j.a.panese, "Mr. Ito is an old friend of mine. You may be quite certain that Asako's money is safe."

"Oh yes, of course," a.s.sented Geoffrey, "but what exactly are her investments? I think I ought to know."

Murata began to laugh nervously, as all j.a.panese do when embarra.s.sed.

"_Mon Dieu_!" he exclaimed, "but I do not know myself. The money has been paid regularly for nearly twenty years; and I know the Fujinami are very rich. Indeed, Captain Barrington, I do not think Asako would like j.a.pan. It was her father's last wish that she should never return there."

"But why?" asked Geoffrey. He felt that Murata was keeping something from him. The little man answered,--

"He thought that for a woman the life is more happy in Europe; he wished Asako to forget altogether that she was j.a.panese."

"Yes, but now she is married and her future is fixed. She is not going back permanently to j.a.pan, but just to see the country. I think we would both of us like to. People say it is a magnificent country."

"You are very kind," said Murata, "to speak so of my country. But the foreign people who marry j.a.panese are happy if they stay in their own country, and j.a.panese who marry foreigners are happy if they go away from j.a.pan. But if they stay in j.a.pan they are not happy. The national atmosphere in j.a.pan is too strong for those people who are not j.a.panese or are only half j.a.panese. They fade. Besides life in j.a.pan is very poor and rough. I do not like it myself."

Somehow Geoffrey could not accept these as being the real reasons. He had never had a long talk with a j.a.panese man before; but he felt that if they were all like that, so formal, so unnatural, so secretive, then he had better keep out of the range of Asako's relatives.

He wondered what his wife really thought of the Muratas, and during the return to their hotel, he asked,--

"Well, little girl, do you want to go back again and live at Auteuil?"

She shook her head.

"But it is nice to think you have always got an extra home in Paris, isn't it?" he went on, fis.h.i.+ng for an avowal that home was in his arms only, a kind of conversation which was the wine of life to him at that period.

"No," she answered with a little shudder, "I don't call that home."

Geoffrey's conventionality was a little bit shocked at this lack of affection; he was also disappointed at not getting exactly the expected answer.

"Why, what was wrong with it?" he asked.

"Oh, it was not pretty or comfortable," she said, "they were so afraid to spend money. When I wash my hands, they say, 'Do not use too much soap; it is waste.'"

Asako was like a little prisoner released into the sunlight. She dreaded the idea of being thrust back into darkness again.

In this new life of hers anything would have made her happy, that is to say, anything new, anything given to her, anything good to eat or drink, anything soft and s.h.i.+mmery to wear, anything--so long as her big husband was with her. He was the most fascinating of all her novelties. He was much nicer than Lady Everington; for he was not always saying, "Don't," or making clever remarks, which she could not understand. He gave her absolutely her own way, and everything that she admired. He reminded her of an old Newfoundland dog who had been her slave when she was a little girl.

He used to play with her as he would have played with a child, watching her as she tried on her finery, hiding things for her to find, holding them over her head and making her jump for them like a puppy, arranging her ornaments for her in those continual private exhibitions which took up so much of her time. Then she would ring the bell and summon all the chambermaids within call to come and admire; and Geoffrey would stand among all these womenfolk, listening to the chorus of "_Mon Dieu!_" and "_Ah, que c'est beau!_" and "_Ah, qu'elle est gentille!_" like some Hector who had strayed into the _gynaeceum_ of Priam's palace. He felt a little foolish, perhaps, but very happy, happy in his wife's naive happiness and affection, which did not require any mental effort to understand, nor that panting pursuit on which he had embarked more than once in order to keep up with the witty flirtatiousness of some of the beauties of Lady Everington's _salon_.

Happiness shone out of Asako like light. But would she always be happy? There were the possibilities of the future to be reckoned with, sickness, childbirth, and the rearing of children, the hidden development of the character which so often grows away from what it once cherished, the baleful currents of outside influences, the attraction and repulsion of so-called friends and enemies all of which complicate the primitive simplicity of married life and forfeit the honeymoon Eden. Adam and Eve in the garden of the Creation can hear the voice of G.o.d whispering in the evening breeze; they can live without jars and ambitions, without suspicion and without reproaches.

They have no parents, no parents-in-law, no brothers, sisters, aunts, or guardians, no friends to lay the train of scandal or to be continually pulling them from each other's arms. But the first influence which crosses the walls of their paradise, the first being to whom they speak, which possesses the semblance of a human voice, is most certainly Satan and that Old Serpent, who was a liar and a slanderer from the beginning, and whose counsels will lead inevitably to the withdrawal of G.o.d's presence and to the doom of a life of pain and labor.

There was one cloud in the heaven of their happiness. Geoffrey was inclined to tease Asako about her native country. His ideas about j.a.pan were gleaned chiefly from musical comedies. He would call his wife Yum Yum and Pitti Sing. He would fix the end of one of her black veils under his hat, and would ask her whether she liked him better with a pigtail.

"Captain Geoffrey," she would complain, "it is the Chinese who wear the pigtail; they are a very savage people."

Then he would call her his little _geisha_, and this she resented; for she knew from the Muratas that _geisha_ were bad women who took husbands away from their wives, and that was no joking matter.